synergy

Perspective

When K was going through the worst of the bipolar and prior to her episode, back in 2003, I visited a psychiatrist for weekly therapy sessions. I went out of a sense of desperation. The situation at home was challenging me and I was beginning to worry that I would shatter from the strain it was putting on me.

The sessions were helpful. It took some time before I was willing to trust the psychiatrist or talk openly about the situation with K. I remember times when I would lose control and start crying to the point of being unable to speak or at times to even know why I was crying.

The psychiatrist did help me to gain perspective on the situation and to assert my own needs into my relationship with K. Mostly, I was subsuming my needs in order to make things easier on her. Without the therapy sessions, I think that K's bipolar episode would have been even worse on us than it was. After six months, she let me know that she didn't believe that I would benefit from further therapy.

She probably believed it was better to stop, since K was doing better and I had placed very tight boundaries on the discussion to restrict the focus only on to what was happening with K. I had no desire to go looking at any other aspect of my life. A couple of times when she began to prod my defense mechanisms, specifically my use of denial to allow myself to cope throughout a crisis, the impact was that I would struggle to regain my equilibrium. We decided it was too risky for her to touch those boundaries as that was holding me together.

As it stands, I still get tired, frustrated, and irritable with myself and with K. However, I no longer feel as if I will shatter, if one more thing in my day will make me come apart. I'm able to concentrate on my job and be productive. My entire being is not filled with anxiety over what the next minute, hour, or day will bring or what will happen to the two of us next. I don't have to get through my day by focusing on getting through each individual minute to minute. The contractors have taken their bite out of my ass, but it's not enough to impact my world.

As long as I believe that my equilibrium is not out of balance, I will continue on without professional assistance. But I do realize that if things become to great for me to muddle through, address, handle, or manage, I have the phone number to ask for help.

posted by synergy @ 1:55 PM